Nursing the Commons

Bill Resnick talks to Ted Levine a nurse in NYC, a rank and file activist and spokesperson for the nurses in NYC hospitals. They first point out that nurses have learned a great deal in the COVID crisis: For one that they are risking their lives in understaffed and under equipped hospitals because economic and political elites have cut the public health system and also cut hospital preparation. Why the cuts: to insure greater profits and greater tax cuts for themselves. Nurses also learned that the American public has come to appreciate their skills and commitments to patients, their altruism. The capacity of nurses to be heard and supported has thus greatly increased. The interview discusses what nurses can now do, in their workplaces and in politics to transform the medical system for the benefit of its workers and for its patients and the public, especially for minorities and the poor. The interview discusses that potential, what nurses will likely be doing going forward.